Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings,
Christmas
season kind of snuck up on us this year, and we’re tending to these things late
in the days before the holiday. We’ll
plead busyness, even though the holiday doesn’t change dates on the calendar. Both of us are generally well, but work takes
up more of our time and energy. More on
that later... So, before we digress into
a quick review of our past year, may we wish you all a Merry Christmas!
As
we end 2013, it was clear that our 15th year of marriage gave us some
very special memories and some nice reminders of our love for each other. We realize it’s not fun getting older, and
each of us has some nagging aches and pains.
It was time to say good bye to a loved uncle. And it was time to deal with being crime
victims for the first time. We – and
Sasha – are ready to move on to 2014.
This
past year was when our Princess Sasha “grew up.” She discovered there is an outside world, and
the two of us have learned both to follow her on “Sasha walks,” and the
pleasure of sitting outside with her, while she is in her giant cage on the
front stoop or is investigating the bushes around the sidewalk.
Growing
up, the Lindes spent a lot of time with Cheryl’s Aunt Eulah and Uncle Bob
Kingsbury. Cheryl has stayed close to
Eulah through the years. Sadly this year, we all lost Bob, who passed away in
June at age 85. As we approach this
first Christmas since, we recall the legacy Bob Kingsbury left, perhaps best
seen through his three sons, their many grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren,
too.
Shortly
after Thanksgiving, we were victimized by someone who broke a side car window,
and stole Wes’s rolling briefcase off the back seat. It’s amazing how quickly everything important
can be fixed or replaced; we found the window broken on a cold Friday night,
and by Monday afternoon, the window was replaced, and by the Thursday after,
the County provided Wes with a new rolling briefcase.
The Hennepin
County training unit has been very busy – and has been short-handed for a few
months; Wes helps train new Human
Service Representatives (workers who deal with public assistance cases), and there
have been large, new groups all year long, especially this fall when four
groups (about 90 people) all got started.
Word is that in both January and March, the County plans to hire up to
75-80 more, which will be like having eight groups being trained at the same
time next spring. Know anyone looking
for entry-level work in the Twin Cities?
Cheryl knows about things being short-handed, too – with two of her
co-workers having left recently, and the work piling up. We both know this makes for stressful days
and tired nights.
Still,
Wes has kept involved in area politics, continuing to meet monthly with other
Democrats in the Andover-Anoka-Ramsey area (SD 35). In February, he’ll be coordinating the DFL
precinct caucuses at Andover High School for our District 35B precincts in this
area.
Wes
joined a neighborhood book club through Facebook this year, with the group reading
“Gone Girl” (interesting), “Molokai” (good), “Still Alice” (probably the best
of the six read), “The Man in My Basement” (Wes’s pick - unusual), “Little Bee”
(quirky), and “A Spot of Bother” (subject of our widest difference of
opinion). The group – Wes is the token
guy - had good discussions of the books and chatted about what was going on in
our lives. Wes (and Cheryl) hosted the
group in July, which usually finds four or five of us meeting. Thirteen years in, this remains a lovely
neighborhood – festive lights this time of year, a neighbor who creates a
wonderful Halloween experience each fall, folks who help each other with
clearing driveways and mowing lawns, and people at all stages of life, from
young families to empty nesters to those with kids involved in area sports or
away at college.
Wes
also continues his union activities, although he chose to resign from his
AFSCME Council 5 position as of the end of this month. Responsibilities to the increased work at the
County made it difficult to give his proper time to his statewide AFSCME
members. And this April, Wes will be
stepping down after eight years as a Vice President of Local 34. He is going to continue putting out the
Local’s monthly newsletter for the foreseeable future, but it’s time for some
new blood at the Council and the Local.
In 2013, Wes participated in another contract negotiation, and the
result was more successful than in recent years – members are getting raises,
“pay steps” will be paid for the first time in four years, we’ll have a good
health insurance plan, and a revised job classification he worked toward for
the past two years is being put in place in January.
We
got away this year to three destinations.
We visited Milwaukee for the first time, flying there in February, to
watch nephew Ben Linde compete in a multi-state gymnastics meet against other
seven/eight/nine-year olds. Ben did
great, and we enjoyed a beautiful spring-like weekend, supping at a Wisconsin
Friday night fish fry, touring the Harley-Davidson Museum and Miller Brewery,
taking in a concert at the Milwaukee Symphony, and joining the gymnasts at ‘Safe
House’, a spy-themed restaurant on the river.
This summer, we returned to the Iron Range, after visiting Ely, MN for
the first time. We went far below the
surface at the state’s Soudan Underground Mine, which we highly recommend a
visit to next year! We also stopped at
the Judy Garland Museum along Highway 169, in her hometown of Grand Rapids.
Our
big 4th of July trip this year was to the East Coast, focusing on
the 150th Anniversary of Gettysburg.
We toured the Gettysburg battlefield and spent two days watching
re-enactors relive the important moments of this three-day turning point of the
Civil War. We based ourselves in Baltimore, where yes, Wes ‘dragged’ Cheryl to
an Orioles’ baseball game at Camden Yards – a win over Texas.
Not
only did we drive to Gettysburg from our Baltimore hotel, but we spent two days
in Washington DC, seeing the Fourth of July fireworks and joining the crowd of
nearly a million on the Mall. We walked the
perimeter of the White House, stood in a longgggg line to visit the National
Archives (anyone agree with Wes that the Archives staff are way too
‘militaristic’ in how they usher visitors past the Declaration, the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights?), visited the National Art Gallery and
Smithsonian History Museum, enjoyed the International Spy Museum, and took a
nighttime tour of the City – seeing the U.S. Capitol, and visiting the Lincoln
and Jefferson Memorials and the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument.
We
also drove to Annapolis and Dover, visiting the capitols of Maryland and
Delaware, and trying some great Maryland crab cake at Chicky & Ruth’s Delly,
a block from the capitol in Annapolis.
We took in a different capitol at Harrisburg, PA, which was part of a
visit to the President James Buchanan House at Lancaster, a drive through Amish
country, and a fun evening in Hershey, at Hershey Chocolate World and a most
unusually laid-out movie theater (where we saw the very appropriate “White
House Down” the night before the “4th”).
We
finished our “Star Spangled trip” with a day in Philadelphia, where we walked
Ben Franklin’s streets, paid our respects to the Liberty Bell (it is impressive, even if you feel rushed
seeing it), took a trolley trip around the city, and visited Independence Hall
on the day (July 8th) that re-enactors re-created the first reading
of the Declaration of Independence, a mere 237 years ago! This was a “Wes-type” trip to celebrate our
15th Anniversary, and it was memorable, so we’ll need to keep
finding interesting places to celebrate our nation’s birthday – maybe Seattle
this next year!
Our
best wishes for the coming year!
Wes and Cheryl Volkenant
